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Renew the Fairness Doctrine
With the old Fairness Doctrine, the Federal Communications Commission attempted to "ensure that all coverage of controversial issues be balanced and fair." The FCC took the view that radio - and later TV - licensees were "public trustees," and thus had an obligation to give reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on issues of public importance.
But strictly enforcing the requirement that stations allow all points of view was only one benefit of the Fairness Doctrine. Another was that the policy opened radio and TV to members of minority races.
The Fairness Doctrine, eliminated during the 1980s, is in the air again. Questions of whether there was "balanced and fair" coverage of the candidates in 2008 has sent waves of anger and perhaps fear through the ranks of conservative talk-show hosts. Perhaps that apprehension should also be felt by liberals and so-called progressives. Both sides were fairly liberal in their bashing of candidates whose views they did not share.
This wouldn't have happened under the Fairness Doctrine, when stations were required to keep track of the amount of time allocated to minority points of view. Those records were submitted at license renewal time, and helped determine if a station stayed in business. As a result, many stations began to air shows hosted and produced by members of minority races, including American Indians.
Around Indian country, white listeners and viewers were introduced to a perspective that had existed in their neighborhoods for years but was totally new to them. An American Indian point of view began to surface.
In Albuquerque, N.M., a Laguna man named John Belindo began a television show called The First Americans, a show I co-hosted on several occasions. When I moved back home to South Dakota, I brought the idea with me. In 1975, I started a weekly Northern Plains version of The First Americans at KEVN, a commercially owned station in Rapid City.
Bob Giago, an Oglala Lakota, and his wife then, Millie, a Laguna, were doing TV shows in Oklahoma City. Wallace Coffey, who later went on to become chairman of the Comanche Nation, also had a weekly TV show there.
Up in North Dakota, Harriet Skye, a Hunkpapa Lakota, was doing a weekly talk show on Bismarck TV. Over in Billings, Mont., a Nez Perce man named Ron Holt had a show called Indians in Progress.
None of us realized that these doors of opportunity had opened because of the Fairness Doctrine. We knew only that the doors were open, and we were determined to make the most of it.
Ron Holt discovered the power of the doctrine when he had the area director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs on his show and was verbally accosted by a tribal leader demanding equal time. "I asked the station manager about it and he told me that I had better damned well give the tribal leader equal time because that was the rule of the Fairness Doctrine. It was the first time I heard about it," he said.
When the Fairness Doctrine came up for renewal in 1987, it was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan, and vetoed again by the first Bush administration. The battle to shut the doors forever on the doctrine or to give it a new life is in the hands of Congress and the Obama administration. Will it be renewed or buried?
Tim Giago (najournalist@msn.com) is the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association.
13 Comments so far
Show AllI don't think this would work anymore, in the age of digital cable, satellite TV, satellite radio, and the Internet. Didn't the Fairness Doctrine just apply to network TV channels and AM/FM radio?
The Fairness Doctrine is not the answer and could/should not be renewed. Why would anyone even want to even try to balance the rants of Hannity, Limbaugh or Olbermann? Why would anyone want to try to balance the naivety or the lack of objectivity of Couric or Gibson? Though sometimes difficult, it is always possible to find an opposing view and that opposing view does not always deserve to be heard.
News must be separated from opinion; news must be separated from entertainment. News is not what GE, Disney, Clear Channel or News Corp says it is.
The renewal of a license for continued use of the public airwaves should be predicated on two things; first, the separation of news from everything else through clear and repeated labeling and second, the scope, scale and lack of bias of actual news.
In addition, there should be a sliding scale of fees paid for the use of these publically held airwaves based on the economic value derived from the license. Licenses should be renewed every two or three years. Some entities may choose not to provide news or other public information and their licensing fee would represent that economic decision. Others, providing the public service of un-biased, broad and deep news should have their fees reduced.
They hate us because of our freedom! Right, and I have this bridge....
"Will it be renewed or buried?"
It may not be perfect, but Obama had better renew the Fairness Doctrine if he wants to stay in business. Throughout his berserking, murdering, stealing and lying, the MSM was seldom as tough on Bush as it is with Obama. It practically ignores liberals and progressives.
The airwaves are controlled almost entirely by the conservative oligarchy that forms the public opinion that insures their continued exploitation of the public.
Give the people all sides of an issue and trust us to decide who's right and who's wrong, not the corporate networks, the right wing pundits or MSM intimidated politicians.
It would be instructive to see equal time dedicated to atheism, agnosticism, Buddhism, etc. to balance all the Christian stations, to the left as well as to the right, to liberalism as well as conservatism and so on.
The world is not as simple as the MSM would like us to think. The public airwaves belong to We the People. We should be able to lease them to whoever we want to. And we want good programming in return for their measly rent, not simply propaganda to keep us consuming and making them richer at people's and environmental expense.
I have mixed feelings about FD. While I am strongly in favor of restoring it, we need to get past that issue because FD did not stop Nixon and Reagan from winning. FD would need to be reformed big time if it were to be reinstated.
True, but maybe Nixon and Reagan won because they were better financed than McGovern and Carter, pointing out the fact that we also need publicly financed campaigns, IRV, proportional representation, etc. But more than that, I think we need to implement something like the Swiss System to keep politicians honest.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1435383/How-direct-democracy-makes-Switzerland-a-better-place.html
I don't know how well the Fairness Doctrine would work in this day and age, but I think the whole system has to be overhauled. I think the FCC should be some sort of constitutionaly mandated commission that would be charged with making sure the media fostered real debate and made sure people got the information they really needed to make decisions. I think such a commission would be charged with defining what a journalist is, and making a set of ethical guidelines for practicing journalism. I think such a commission would have its own antitrust division, if necessary. And I think the commissioners should be elected by the public in staggered years, answerable directly to the public, not appointed by whoever happens to be in office at the moment.
Just a few thoughts on the subject...
The Fairness Doctrine applied only to communications entities using licensed public airwaves, the places that many Americans still glimpse, if they are looking, the news and viewpoints that inform their belief system.
The Fairness Doctrine should absolutely be applied to these radio and TV stations. It's outrageous that someone who tunes in to the Sunday punditfests trying to get a broader view of important issues facing the U.S. and the world, is served a 2 to 1 imbalance of right-wing over progressive opinions.
Make it a law and require the FCC to enforce it.
...is served a 2 to 1 imbalance of right-wing over progressive opinions.
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And what about independents who are anywhere from 25-50% of the population and get ZERO % of the air-time?
Link TV is an independent TV station, airs Democracy Now! and independent news such as All-Jazeera...it's only available on satellite though, as far as I know. But it is way better than any shitty cable 'news' show.
Beware of those masquerading as Progressives who say the Fairness Doctrine would not work today and instead we should focus solely on diversity of ownership.
What's going to prevent an African American, Hispanic or female owner from succumbing to financial or political pressure and refuse to run shows and allow opinions reflecting those they're supposed to be speaking for?
Not a damn thing.
Content. Content. Content.
I only care about content.
If you have a full spectrum of content you'll assure yourself of a diversity of employees and ultimately ownership.
However, focusing simply on who owns the stations will not guarantee that all views are reflected in the programming.
And then you're back at square one.
So how does the government regulate content without violating First Amendment rights? I can imagine forcing these stations to only report the truth would be seen at Constitutional...simply ban them from including commentary when broadcasting real news items. But then how do you enforce it, determine what is truth and what is not?
We absolutely need to bring the Fairness Doctrine back - and I really think the issue here is that most do not know what it did exactly - AND- add in the fact that corporate media has been able to successfully shut this argument down every time doing exactly what the Fairness Doctrine could help STOP - they have misinformed the public on this issue -
This is also from Common Dreams & furthers this argument-
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0212-03.htm
(from the article)
There are many misconceptions about the Fairness Doctrine. For instance, it did not require that each program be internally balanced, nor did it mandate equal time for opposing points of view. And it didn’t require that the balance of a station’s program lineup be anything like 50/50.
Nor, as Rush Limbaugh has repeatedly claimed, was the Fairness Doctrine all that stood between conservative talkshow hosts and the dominance they would attain after the doctrine’s repeal. In fact, not one Fairness Doctrine decision issued by the FCC had ever concerned itself with talkshows. Indeed, the talkshow format was born and flourished while the doctrine was in operation. Before the doctrine was repealed, right-wing hosts frequently dominated talkshow schedules, even in liberal cities, but none was ever muzzled (The Way Things Aren’t, Rendall et al., 1995). The Fairness Doctrine simply prohibited stations from broadcasting from a single perspective, day after day, without presenting opposing views.
In answer to charges, put forward in the Red Lion case, that the doctrine violated broadcasters’ First Amendment free speech rights because the government was exerting editorial control, Supreme Court Justice Byron White wrote: “There is no sanctuary in the First Amendment for unlimited private censorship operating in a medium not open to all.” In a Washington Post column (1/31/94), the Media Access Project (MAP), a telecommunications law firm that supports the Fairness Doctrine, addressed the First Amendment issue: “The Supreme Court unanimously found [the Fairness Doctrine] advances First Amendment values. It safeguards the public’s right to be informed on issues affecting our democracy, while also balancing broadcasters’ rights to the broadest possible editorial discretion.”
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You may be educated, informed and engaged but the majority are not and we live among them, they are being manipulated and lied to - consider what's happening elsewhere right now as the global economy collapses - protests, riots and regime change---in the USA our corporate dominated media has been able to keep the masses calm & distracted with their info-tainment heavy broadcasts--imagine if our nation's broadcasters were required to air opposing views on issues like health-care, global warming, worker's rights, or even TARP. Would Americans be so calm? They'd be less stupid and I think that makes us all more safe-no?
We will never get change until we kill the mis-messenger - President Obama should bring back the Fairness Doctrine, regulate the propaganda and bust-up the ever-condensing media conglomerates.
The rightwing pundits are pushing hard against it, as would be expected. What they fear I am sure, is that point view will not stand the test with the majority of the people, when bought into equal light.
They will argue of course with their twisted logic,that the fairness doctrine infringes on their free speech rights. The doctrine does not of course stop people from expressing their views, it only demands equal time for an opposing view point. Which is of course the way it should be in a democratic society.
Anyone in my opinion anyone that would argue against the fairness doctrine, is only interested in pushing their point of view, and surpressing everyone elses.